Dinosaurs

Sauropods – the giant, long-necked dinosaurs like Brachiosaurus – were the largest land animals to ever walk the Earth. Now, researchers have studied sauropod feet and found that the animals may have had an unexpected gait – tiptoeing around like they were wearing high heels.

Like the Wright Brothers, evolution didn’t get flight exactly right the first time. It takes experimentation to find the best design, and now palaeontologists have found one of nature’s quirky side projects – a strange dinosaur that was covered in feathers but had leathery bat-like wings.

In 1998, a 16-year-old boy with a passion for paleontology unearthed a near-complete skeleton of one of Tyrannosaurus rex's cousins. It was a defining moment in the boy's life, but at the time nobody knew what it was. Now, 21 years later, the dinosaur he found finally has a name.

On the timeline of the evolution of flight in birds, gliding seems like a logical first step. But new research suggests that some species could have made the jump straight to flapping flight without a gliding phase in the meantime, which could force a rewrite of our understanding of avian evolution.

​It takes millions of years for life to fully recover from a catastrophic extinction event, according to a new study that examined the aftermath of the asteroid strike that wiped out all non-avian dinosaurs 66 million years ago.

​Back in 1991, paleontologists from the University of Alberta discovered the remains of a Tyrannosaurus rex in the province of Saskatchewan. Nicknamed "Scotty" in honor of a celebratory bottle of Scotch that was enjoyed when its skeleton was found, it has now been declared the world's largest T rex.

When you think of tyrannosaurs, it's probably the giant predator from the Jurassic Park movies – but even the biggest names have to start small. Palaeontologists have now filled in more of the creature’s modest roots, in the form of a new species of tyrannosauroid that was probably smaller than you.

The earth was a much hotter place in prehistoric times, so it follows that large heavily-armored dinosaurs likely retained a lot of heat in their bodies. A new study suggests that their brains were protected from overheating, however, thanks to a heat exchanging system in their noses.

A new study paints pterosaurs as far cuddlier creatures than we might have thought. According to an international team of palaeontologists, pterosaurs were covered in no less than four different types of feathers, pushing back the origin of this bodily covering by about 70 million years.

While dinosaurs were the biggest land animals ever, mammals were mostly rat-sized critters running around underfoot. But now palaeontologists have described a mammal ancestor from the Triassic Period that grew to the size of an elephant, giving those early dinosaurs a run for their money.